SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2018
“You must kill all your darlings.” —William Faulkner
Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer unafraid to confront the limits of his form. His dances share a vital force that results from their volatility, their vulnerability. One decade ago, he shamelessly invented and began disseminating his popular participatory performance DEEP AEROBICS, a protest-cum-workout that has been presented around the world. Since its inception, Gutierrez wrote that “he hopes to soon destroy the technique, because it’s just too hard to teach, and really the world is going to hell in a hand basket anyway.”
K-D-A-VER is the fulfillment of an artist’s dream, a one-time solo performance that goes beyond merely killing a darling of a work, to kicking its corpse. With brazen honesty and wit, Gutierrez’s self-critique becomes our critique, as he abandons his efforts to generate the pleasures of resistance that gave DEEP AEROBICS its life. For one night, he picks the bones of a past work, lays a shroud over its hopes, and invites us to witness a ritualized death to the joys of the past.
Come prepared to participate, or not, in a costume, whatever that means to you. Taste the tears.
8PM // LIVE ARTS LOS ANGELES
4210 Panamint Street, Los Angeles, CA 90065
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Made possible with generous funding from the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Miguel Gutierrez lives in Brooklyn, NY. He creates dance based performances, music and poetry. His work has been presented at Centre National de Danse/Pantin, Centre Pompidou, Kampnagel, ImPulsTanz, Philly Live Arts, Walker Art Center, TBA/PICA, MCA Chicago, ICA Boston, New York Live Arts, Live Arts Bard, AMERICAN REALNESS, the 2014 Whitney Biennial and many other festivals and venues. He has received support from Creative Capital, MAP, National Dance Project, Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts and the Tides Foundation. He is a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow, United States Artist Fellow, and award recipient from Foundation for Contemporary Art. He is a 2016 Doris Duke Artist. He has received four New York Dance and Performance Bessie Awards. His recent work includes a commission for Ballet de Lorraine in Nancy, France, called Cela nous concerne tous (This concerns all of us), which was inspired by the events of May 1968 in France. He has created music for several of his works, for choreographer Antonio Ramos, and in collaboration with Colin Self for Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony’s Everything Fits In The Room. He has performed as a singer with Anohni, Justin Vivian Bond, Vincent Segal, and Holcombe Waller, has a music duo with Nick Hallett called Nudity in Dance, and he recently launched a project called SADONNA, sad versions of Madonna songs. He invented DEEP AEROBICS and he is a Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. He is the program director for LANDING, a new educational initiative at Gibney Dance Center. His book WHEN YOU RISE UP is available from 53rd State Press.
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photo: Ian Douglas
